


April Come She Will

by applegnat



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applegnat/pseuds/applegnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piacenza Calcio have been in Serie A for a couple of years now, but they're content to be cautious, to take happiness where they find it. Survival is a credit to everyone involved. Alberto can sympathise with the general outlook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	April Come She Will

**Author's Note:**

> Written for footie_100's Sun &amp; Smut 2009 challenge. For Rose, with apologies for being less than faithful to the spirit of her prompt – I'm sorry to be the sort of person who interprets a prompt that says 'genfic' as 'enthusiastic romantic comedy.' With hopes that she enjoyed this at least a little, in spite of everything, and belated happy birthday!

\--_ April come she will  
When the streams are ripe and swelled with rain;  
May, she will stay,  
Resting in my arms again._

June, she'll change her tune,  
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;  
July, she will fly  
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,  
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;  
September, I'll remember  
A love once new has now grown old.

 

**Piacenza. May 2017**.

> **apaloschi**: Holy mother of God, Mario. You aren't going to believe who I ran into this morning.  
> **wantarevolution**: filippo inzaghi.  
> **apaloschi**: ...  
> **wantarevolution**: oh, please. the only other person you'd be all that excited about meeting is vincent cassel. and he's here in cannes right now.   
> **apaloschi**: What?  
> **wantarevolution**: seriously. he &amp; monica walked past me on the beach yesterday and asked me when i was coming back to italy. 

~*~

Alberto's medical has shown them very favourable results, the Piacenza chairman tells him. Very favourable. Exceeding expectations. Now if he can just avoid enough tackles to one, keep his ankles unmolested and two, keep the club in Serie A – goals, dear boy, the simple difference between paradise and purgatory – the chairman will consider him an unqualified success.

This is Alberto's seventh club in the nine years since his professional debut, and his standards for personal success have changed often and unpredictably in that time. He works his left ankle from side to side as he stands, decides not to try to inspire confidence that he'll be fulfilling either demand just yet, and settles for a smile and a handshake.

Breaking up with the lawyer he'd been seeing for three years on the sly came about as a natural consequence of his finally selling the flat in Catania. (Piacenza so much more civilised, people so much nicer, weather so much better, and anyway, he wasn't thinking of moving again soon, was he? was his mother's opinion on the real estate issue). It ended up being a relatively painless affair. His mother doesn't agree that he's really not ready for a family, but then Alberto is far less certain of where he's headed than she is. He's grown into a phlegmatic man, quite willing to accommodate his own nomadism, short-term career prospects and long-term injuries, but he has his own ideas about what those might mean to someone else. Of course, he has his own ideas about what constitutes a family that have nothing to do with his mother's thoughts on the subject.

But then there is also the fact that his soon-to-be colleagues are all off on beach holidays and ignoring phone calls from their agents, and he's already here, three months ahead of his official starting date, house-hunting. He hasn't come this far by resigning himself entirely to being tossed about by destiny.

He spends a week calling up real estate agents and being eaten out of fees and tips by unctuous middlemen. It's not a new phenomenon – he's done this in five different cities, on five different budgets. From Monday to Saturday he looks at apartments. He looks at them in little heaps of damp plaster and mossy ceilings, in modern off-white matchboxes not too different from the hotel room where the club is putting him up, in rickety-staired converted chapels and in spleet-new concrete structures so far outside the city he might as well fly in to training every day.

Part of him berates himself for stalling over something so ridiculous. He needs a roof over his head for a year, and it should be easy. Alberto spends his evenings in the cafés and cathedrals around the main square, and gives himself a stern talking-to. Piacenza is a beautiful city, but even beautiful cities don't need more than two bedrooms, functional plumbing, no termites, and some decent storage space. There's no reason for him to dither over this. He's not making an attempt at permanence.

He gives up on Saturday afternoon, and makes up his mind to take the next thing going – which, by the sound of it, is a second-floor walk-up at right angles to a traffic signal – when he walks out of the hotel restaurant and notices the vintage white convertible parked in the driveway through the French windows, and then shakes his head to make sure his eyes aren't fooling him as they alight on a small, dark figure in the dimness of the lobby.

"I expected you'd call," Pippo Inzaghi says.

Alberto stares.

~*~

  
**What Happened To Them? Ten Serie A Prodigies Who Failed To Live Up To The Hype**

[...]

_8\. Alberto Paloschi (Piacenza)_  
Unambitious transfers and and a string of injuries have made a journeyman out of the Milan youth product famous for scoring within 18 seconds of his Serie A debut, with his first-ever touch. Loaned out to Reggina at age 19 to polish his game in the lower reaches of the league, he has never succeeded in making his way back up to the top of the heap. Without quite the explosive talent of childhood friend Mario Balotelli or the creative vision of his Milan teammate Alexandre Pato, the record of Paloschi's outings with the Azzurini and his odd successful seasons, at Benfica and Catania, more than hint at a wasted chance for Serie A.

[...]

**Report: Balotelli To Milan?**

AC Milan are reportedly involved in a cheeky bid for Real Madrid star Mario Balotelli, after contract negotiations between the player and club broke down over Balotelli's increased wage demands. The ex-Chelsea, Juventus and Valencia hitman is a product of the Inter youth system, and began his professional career at the San Siro with Milan's traditional rivals.

> ["I spit me of them and their bid," Mario says. "Can you believe they have the guts? The fucking guts. After what they did to you, they'll be lucky to escape a meeting with me with their heads in place, I'm telling you."
> 
> "Wow," Alberto says. "Please tell me you won't expect me to do the same if Inter ever call me. I could really use the money."
> 
> "Oh, _money_," Mario says. "Money is okay."]

~*~

"Travel, investments, that sort of thing," Pippo says. They are at dinner, that evening, Alberto having treated his appointment with his real estate agent with cavalier disregard. He is now decimating his plate of food to avoid having to ingest it and then throw up with excitement. "You know. Enjoying my leisure."

The restaurant's mood lighting makes it hard to pick out changes in the man sitting across from him. His hair is a black that is almost indigo. The only lines on his face are the ones that have always been there – the scar that could be a dimple (or vice versa), the furrow at the corner of his mouth that deepens as he flashes Alberto a smile, quick and strange as ever. He doesn't eat either, Alberto notices.

"Must be nice," Alberto says stupidly, and then forks basil and mushroom into his mouth, to give it something civilised to do.

"It passes the time," says Pippo. "Why aren't you on holiday like everyone else?"

Alberto swallows hurriedly and answers. "I really haven't been doing much to earn a holiday," he says. "I've had enough inactivity during the season itself, some years."

Pippo lowers his fork and gazes at Alberto, who is patching together an internal defence against the situation even as he gazes back and entertains some pleasant thoughts about how dark those eyes are. It isn't ten years ago. It simply isn't. Things were so much worse when Alberto was eighteen. So much less likely to be a a surreal dream from which he would wake soon, and discover that sitting in a restaurant in Piacenza opposite Filippo Inzaghi just did not happen to the wakeful. Now he can just play along and pretend it isn't happening.

"Well," Pippo says, clearly having cast about for a suitable way to respond to Alberto's last remark, "you're still young."

"I'm almost twenty-seven," Alberto says.

"I know," Pippo says. "I know that."

 

> ["Ah," Mario says. "He _knows._"
> 
> "Oh, grow up," Alberto snaps.
> 
> "Someone certainly has."
> 
> "Shut your mouth, Mario."
> 
> "You knew he was going to be there. Admit it."
> 
> "I – no!"
> 
> "You _knew_."
> 
> "It didn't even occur to me."
> 
> "So why are you at Piacenza, at all?"
> 
> "...What do you mean, why?"
> 
> "I hope it's for the money," Mario says. "Don't even tell me it isn't for the money."]

"I was about your age when I moved to Milan," Pippo says. "Not that I'm trying to draw a parallel."

"It was hardly a surprise, what you did at Milan," Alberto smiles.

"Well, sometimes you have to treat everything that comes your way as your due," Pippo says. "It's the only way to make peace with the good and the bad."

 

A voice behind them exclaims "Oh, my _God_," in a reverent tone of voice as they're leaving the restaurant. Alberto turns to see a sparkling-eyed man in a vintage Milan jersey, fishing for his camera.

"I never thought for a moment," the fan says. "I – if you – could you?" He fixes his eye on Alberto. "This'll take just a moment," he says, and succeeds in pulling his digicam out of his pocket and depositing it in Alberto's hand.

"Would you mind?" he asks him, dashing over to Pippo's side. "You have no idea," he says - this time to Pippo, whose frown-line suddenly looks like it's set in stone – "you're my hero. My idol."

Alberto chuckles in spite of himself. "Co-incidence," he murmurs, and clicks.

 

~*~

It isn't entirely for the money. Lazio offered him more, and a chance at the UEFA Cup. They needed a substitute striker. A calculated gamble. But he's just had a decent season by any standards. He wants to play while he has the chance, and the relative unimportance of his new city helps. Piacenza Calcio have been in Serie A for a couple of years now, but they're content to be cautious, to take happiness where they find it. Survival is a credit to everyone involved. Alberto can sympathise with the general outlook.

His new home, he tells himself on his first Sunday in the city, is like the grown-up version of the Disneyland he inhabited as a child. He grew up in the lap of luxury at Milan. Teachers, teammates, training, treatment within Milanello; housing, transport, entertainment, education outside. The best of everything. At seventeen he was a prince, even if no one at the club ever made him believe that he was going to be the heir of van Basten. And there was the city itself; cold and glittering and humungous, like the castles of ice in fairy tale books. Alberto remembers being driven past the Duomo on a crisp autumn night and finding it unbelievable that he could ever hope to belong to this place. Leaning against the railings outside the San Savino now, he thinks, a trifle wearily, of how right his teenage self was.

He thinks this in the short space of time when he hasn't been thinking about middle-aged, hair-colouring, maddeningly aloof footballing legends.

In the intervening years Alberto has come across public evidence of his lack of Inzaghi-related perspective in his salad days, now and then, and made sure to laugh at himself whole-heartedly. He remembers his mother naïvely telling a television channel after one match, "We asked him if he wanted to come home with us, but he went to celebrate with Inzaghi instead." It was Disneyland's best trick; being very good and eating all your vegetables allowed you to come within touching distance of divinity. Pippo, in those days, was every bit the superstar Alberto had spent practically his entire lifetime imagining him to be. He was remote and self-involved and looked and smelled expensive. But he could also be warm and friendly when he realised you were there, and he was never, ever uncomfortable with himself, the way lesser human beings (i.e. Alberto) were. He could welcome you into his presence when you ran half a kilometre up to him just to say hello and invite you to sit down and share his tea biscuits with the same sanguine confidence that he slipped around the last opposing defender and shot low and to the right. You huffed and puffed and ran like a madman, but he still got the better of you.

Alberto had always loved that about him.

~*~

Dinner that first night had ended with a fraternal embrace and a piece of paper with a tiny map and an address dashed off in the neat, slanted hand of an accountant. _Come soon,_ Pippo said as he left. Alberto, generally the obedient sort, complies. (They taught you well in Disneyland.) Summer is slipping into Piacenza now, as May turns to June, suffusing the town with slow heat and deep colour.

Alberto found a house, of course. His landlady has played host to bachelor sportsmen before, but in spite of this she agrees to put him up in her cosy old pile, with a view of the San Francesco cathedral from his balcony, and a rickety old four-poster in the main bedroom, which he decides to keep. To the dazzling modernist expanse of subtly divided white spaces (complete with rose garden and pool) where he's currently trying not to be too loud or untidy, it bears little resemblance.

"Put your feet up." Pippo meets discomfort with tolerance, and a cup of coffee that smells like heaven. "Relax."

"I've always wondered," Alberto says. "After you got your licence. Why did you decide not to coach?"

"Oh, I did it for a lark," Pippo says. "What would I teach?"

This is a strange question to Alberto, who spent a large chunk of his formative years lecturing his friends and family on the act of genius that was the football of SuperPippo. You taught me a lot, Alberto thinks. You taught me how to read an offside trap. You taught me how to avoid a bad tackle. You taught me that I could make myself invisible to defenders. You taught me that I didn't have to be Ronaldo – that I could just be you, instead, if I tried hard enough.

"You taught me a lot," he says.

Pippo looks up at him from his perch on his large white window-sill. He is bright and alert, still a bit of a bird. Alberto realises it may not have been the most sensitive thing to say, considering he's hardly been anyone's idea of an apt pupil.

"Don't blame me," Pippo says to him. His voice is a little gruff. "If I really had, you'd be taking better care of yourself."

 

~*~

**August**

It is a well-worn truth among sportspeople that no one really knows how to win. The more superstitious among them will refuse to even think about it, afraid of losing the magic in attempting to explain it. Call it inspiration, luck, chance; or try and ascribe it a little closer home, to genius or nerve or pluck. There are always the superstars for whom the rules don't apply, the ones at the top of the table, but for the most part, no one knows why, when two sets of people with more or less the same talents and the same degree of exercise go out to compete, one picks the day to win, and the other to lose.

No one knows what makes the difference between scoring a goal and not. Perhaps it's just that Alberto wakes up feeling perfectly rested on the morning of his first Serie A match (they are at home to Brescia). Perhaps it's in the song that's stuck in his head all day, an annoying but bouncy video game tune that he and Mario used to yell and play air guitar to ten years ago. Perhaps it's the weather being perfect for new beginnings; crisp and bracing, the afternoon sunlight woolly on his face as he runs out on to the pitch with his teammates. Perhaps it's inspiration; perhaps it's nerve.

_Can I do this?_ he thinks, a moment before a cross sails over a Brescia defender's head to where he's standing, ten yards from goal. For just a moment, it's Disneyland all over again: the grass is a soft, shimmering green under his heels, and someone is making him strike the ball exquisitely, exquisitely with the side of his foot. He doesn't even have to think his own answer back to himself.

Football is ninety minutes of heightened concentration; Alberto really doesn't have the time to pay attention to anything beyond the touchline. Perhaps he makes a discreet flash of sunglasses and Armani in the director's box out to be more than it is. Perhaps he doesn't. It's only really a sense of things.

> **Serie A Week 1**  
> Piacenza 2-1 Brescia [Armando 5', Novak 46', Paloschi 71']
> 
> **Serie A Week 2**  
> Napoli 2-2 Piacenza [Mancini 17', Eduardo 50', Paloschi 32', 85']
> 
> **Serie A Week 3**  
> Piacenza 3-0 Avellino [Paloschi 4', 27', 68']
> 
> _So will it be four in the next game, Alberto?  
> I don't want to joke about it. [smiles] _

Outside training the Friday after, a knot of fans dressed in red and white is singing "Four goals, four goals, FOUR GOALS next time!"

"Shit," Alberto says on Saturday. "Now what?"

"Relax." It's Pippo on the other line. He's called to wish him luck. "It's just a game."

Alberto's laugh bubbles up. "Yeah," he says. "I've been telling myself that for the last nine years."

Pippo doesn't share in the laughter. Alberto hears a little _click_ at the other end of the line, an exasperated meeting of teeth and tongue. "Whatever suits you, then," he says. "I'm not going to offer you any advice."

"Will you be there?" Alberto finds himself able to say.

"In Turin?" Pippo says. "I think not. Why?"

It is a bit cheapening to have to bump someone down from their pedestal into a good luck charm, so Alberto refrains from saying that he thinks Pippo is lucky for him.

"Just," he offers lamely.

"I'd have to sit in their box, anyway," Pippo says, musing now. "Turin. No. No, I don't think so."

> **Serie A Week 4**  
> Juventus 1-0 Piacenza (Benzema 23')

 

~*~

**November**

> **Serie A Week 14**  
> Lazio 2-4 Piacenza
> 
> _...Alberto Paloschi finally builds on the scintillating streak of form that saw him score six goals in his first three games for new club Piacenza Calcio. In spite of a four-game drought in October when a lack of goals left Piacenza flirting with the relegation spots, the former Benfica and Catania striker has found form again, scoring twice in the Biancorossi's emphatic win over Lazio midweek, which takes his club to the UEFA Cup spots for the first time since early September. _

Italy are playing Serbia in Milan over the weekend. Mario is in the country, and promises to ditch training to come to Piacenza on the Friday. Alberto doesn't bother cleaning out his unused guest room, since Mario is chronically incapable of keeping the promises he makes. He calls Pippo instead – he's had time to get used to the fact that he can do this, so his fingers don't mash the wrong numbers on his keypad anymore – and asks him what he's doing on Sunday.

"I'll be at the match," Pippo says. "Won't you?"

"Oh," Alberto says. "No, I wasn't planning on it."

"Wh—" Pippo begins, and then stops. "So what are you doing on Sunday, then?"

"I don't know," Alberto says, with all the piteous lack of direction of young men of his age and situation. "Maybe I'll go to the museum."

"You want to see old and broken things in action," Pippo says, "you come to the San Siro." He laughs – his laugh is rare, but sudden and brilliant. Alberto has noticed this. Of course Alberto has noticed this – at his own quip. It's a short laugh. He stops then, and waits.

"I really don't," Alberto says, and then stops. He really doesn't. He really doesn't have an excuse.

 

> ["_Oh_," Mario says, stopping in his tracks about ten feet from Alberto, looming over the dressing room and everybody in it, drowning out the other conversations. "I ask and ask you to come up, and you put me off. Is this your idea of a surprise?"
> 
> "I got a ride," Alberto says. Mario is over in a quick bound, sweeping him up in his arms, or trying his best.
> 
> "Jesus," Mario says. "You're really getting in to shape."
> 
> "Wait a minute," Alberto says, and frowns. "You were supposed to come to Piacenza. You never asked me to come up to Milan."
> 
> "I would have if I'd been certain you wouldn't rip my head off," Mario says, with an exaggerated outstretch of arms.
> 
> Across the room, Pippo, leaning against a doorframe, is talking to Ambrosini. Mario stares hard at him, and then smiles politely – Mario's polite smiles are large, grim things – when Pippo turns to glance at them. Pippo nods, and turns back to his conversation without giving them a second glance.
> 
> "Hasn't changed at all," Mario breathes.
> 
> Alberto winds up lying on the roof of Mario's penthouse at midnight, picking pasta out of a plate, and struggling to answer questions.
> 
> "It suits you, then," Mario tells him. "This Piacenza place."
> 
> Alberto shrugs. "The weather's nice."
> 
> "Right. Yes," Mario says. "And the people?"
> 
> Alberto shifts. "They're nice too," he says. "I'm making friends."]

 

~*~

**December**

Success, like everything else in his life, appears unobtrusively. Alberto, who has celebrated goals amidst the shouts of glittering throngs of great stadiums, pumps his fists in the air the first few times, but begins to find it embarrassing to do much more as the reasons to celebrate begin to pile up week after week. The small, comforting crowd at the Garilli become his friends as much as his challengers. It's pleasant, more than anything else. A goal here, a brace there – it's no big deal, he tells himself. It's no big deal, he tells his teammates, who do their best not to smother him with their joy. It's no big deal, except in the tally on the right hand side of the table where his name advances – unobtrusively, unobtrusively – up the scorers' table.

Pippo comes to the home games, sometimes, and hangs around talking to Signor Garilli long after the stadium has started to empty, and the team filter out of the dressing room to drive home. Signor Garilli always catches sight of him and calls him over – the first three weeks in a row, he asks Alberto if he's met their hometown legend Filippo Inzaghi, and looks ready to do it for the fourth week running before Pippo pre-empts him, looking very much as though he wants to laugh, by catching hold of Alberto and planting a kiss on his cheek.

Alberto's ankle niggles in the middle of the night sometimes, and that's enough to retain his sense of proportion. He doesn't have to remind himself that he's been here before to keep his head.

It's a good thing, because he's almost forgotten the fact himself.

In December he goes back to the San Siro. He's made the trip often enough that the feeling of stepping on to that slippery, beachy pitch has transmuted into something entirely different from the first (or the last) time he stepped on it in a red-and-black shirt, but this time the Milan crowd – Piacenza are playing Milan away – don't boo him every time he touches the ball. He chests a pass from his strike partner down successfully and half-volleys the ball past Neuer just after the second half begins, though, and feels a rather pleasant jolt of surprise when the fans in the Milan _curva_ give him a smattering of applause.

"Thank you," he says, facing them after the match, and claps them a little in return.

> ["You really _are_ making friends," Mario says, slyly.]

He is. People have tended to like Alberto wherever he's gone, but in Piacenza they feel comfortable investing time and emotion in him, too. The chairman takes him out to lunch every fortnight or so; his way of expressing affection is to tell Alberto about his financial issues in excruciating detail. His landlady, a mad Piacenza fan, brings him coffee and dessert during the week, and sits down with him to talk about the neighbours and about Piacenza's closest rivals in the table. His teammates don't find much to rag him about, but seem to like him, for all that. They meet like colleagues every day, become friends and brothers every weekend, in the manner of all successful teams. Alberto appreciates the change in circumstance – he understands what it means to get along without the shadow of defeat hanging over their heads. He doesn't spend time with the compulsive clubbers any more than he does with the family guys, but he does get to know all of them well enough.

And he ends up driving himself to the quietest neighbourhood in town more and more often, these days. It's closer to the club's training centre than his own home, anyway. The afternoons grow colder, more resistant to change. So he stays on, into the falling dark. He doesn't do it everyday. It's a house that likes its solitude.

He gets Pippo to show him around, instead. They go to the Piazza Cavalli, and Pippo tells him stories of the bloodthirsty dukes and governors of the city that he learned growing up as a boy, in the shadow of the sinister old chapel. He dumps his rickety old sports car – a relic from deceptively bright days in his early twenties – and invests in the dinky new Cinquecento 2020, in which he turns up at Pippo's doorstep every now and again, and gets him to navigate the hills and fields around the town. Some weeknights, he ends up staying over at the large white house, to warm up dinner and watch the late replays of the Libertadores matches. They talk and talk some more about football. Pippo waves his fork around, describing the thread of a pass from the half-way line, bundling towards the centre, carried all the way on inspiration and cunning, and he is the most alive, most animated, most real thing Alberto has ever known.

He's not stupid. He senses that Pippo's reserve is also a measure of loneliness. He isn't the Milan superstar anymore; his hangers-on have found his lack of desire for the spotlight unsuitable. Family, friends; he has them, of course. Alberto looks at the pictures on the walls and politely turns away when the conversation is interrupted by a ringing phone, a Bergamo or Lombardy number that will keep Pippo occupied for a good half-hour at a time.

"My brother discovered he liked Rome better," Pippo tells him. "I thought of moving, after my parents died, but I discovered I'm tired of moving."

"What about Milan?" Alberto asks, almost afraid of the answer.

Pippo pauses a moment, then shrugs, a beautiful, expansive shrug.

"Too fake?" Alberto ventures, and earns a keen, searching look for his pains. He bites his cheek.

"I'd have to go to work," Pippo says, mildly. "They'd drag me into their boring administrative bureaucracy at the club. I never could find a way to turn Clarence down politely."

"Of course," Alberto says. Of course.

There is a world outside, he realises sometimes, that he used to be part of, and that this older, more withdrawn man he comes to see almost everyday, is still connected with. But here, in Piacenza, there's nobody but the the two of them; and somehow, Alberto doesn't find that strange in the least. Pippo has existed in his imagination for years now as a singular creature (alone, up front, in the glare of the lights). Of course he lives alone. Of course.

 

~*~

Everything goes so well, it seems almost inevitable that Pippo kisses him, first, over the wine glasses one night. Alberto's mind blinks shut, and then explodes in a shot of something cold and starry.

"Tell me you want this," Pippo murmurs, pulling him close.

"Uh," Alberto says, faintly. Pippo draws back and cocks an eyebrow at him.

"I've wanted this for ten years," Alberto says.

Pippo lets go of his collar at that.

"This isn't ten years ago," he says, running a hand through his hair. "You know that, don't you?"

"Every day," Alberto says. "Every day I wake up and think of it not being ten years ago."

Pippo looks at him.

"Every day I look at you and I tell myself this can't be happening," Alberto says. The words come out in a rush.

Something in Pippo's face closes up.

"I don't think this is a good idea," he says.

Alberto feels some conscious part of him, hovering outside of his body from the moment their lips met, thud back into his shoes with devastating immediacy.

"I thought you would appreciate the reality of the situation a little more than you seem to," Pippo says. "But I'm not your lucky charm, Alberto, and I'm not the person you thought I was when you stuck a poster of me on your wall – and you have no idea how embarrassing it is for me to know that about someone I'm kissing – and I realise I shouldn't have done this. I'm sorry."

"No," Alberto says. "It's not – that's not how it is."

Pippo sighs. "Go," he says. "Good night."

Alberto grabs the front of Pippo's shirt, in desperation now, and kisses him again. Pippo makes an odd noise, and starts back.

"I'm not mad!" Alberto cries now. "I'm not a child! I'm incredulous, and you would be too, if you'd come here from – from all over the country, and started doing the one thing nobody expected you to do, which is act like you're eighteen again. Jesus, Filippo, do you _know_ where I've been since I was eighteen?"

Pippo scrunches his face up at this, and withdraws again.

"I've been around the block," he says, a little wryly. "I came here from Milan, if you remember."

"I've been there," Alberto says. "You were the best thing about it."

Pippo throws his head back and laughs. Alberto sees the crows' feet around his eyes, in the brassy gleam of the kitchen lights.

"Please," Alberto says. His voice breaks as he says it.

~*~

**February**

> **Serie A Week 25**  
> Piacenza 4-4 Udinese (Paloschi 17', 23')
> 
>  
> 
> [ "There's something you're not telling me."
> 
> Alberto smiles, as he kicks a football out of his way on the road home.
> 
> "That's right," he says.
> 
> "Hold on. What?"
> 
> "That's right, I said," Alberto says. "I'm not telling you anything."
> 
> "Oh," Mario's voice changes. "Okay."
> 
> "Right."
> 
> "I'm calling Ancelotti, by the way. I'm telling him that I'm not coming down for the friendly unless he calls you up."
> 
> "Mario," Alberto protests at this sudden change of tack. "Don't."
> 
> "Don't kid yourself," Mario says, fervently. "I want to kick your ass in person, bastard."]

~*~

**April **

> **Serie A Week 37**  
> Piacenza 0-0 Milan
> 
> **Serie A Week 38**  
> Sampdoria 2-1 Piacenza (Paloschi 79')
> 
> **Report: Balotelli To Milan?**
> 
> AC Milan are reportedly involved in yet another cheeky bid for Real Madrid star Mario Balotelli, after negotiations for a new contract between the player and club broke down over Balotelli's increased wage demands.
> 
> The ex-Chelsea, Juventus and Valencia hitman is a product of the Inter youth system, and began his professional career at the San Siro with Milan's traditional rivals.
> 
> **Report: Moratti Says: Get Me Paloschi**
> 
> Sources around the Via Durini outfit say that Massimo Moratti is so impressed with Piacenza star striker Alberto Paloschi that he is prepared to offer Piacenza, who put out a firm statement during the winter transfer window that the Chiari-born hitman was untouchable, a record sum of money to sign him. The ex-Chievo, Benfica and Catania star began his professional career at the San Siro, with Inter's traditional rivals Milan, and has enjoyed a vintage season, both in the Biancorossi shirt and his maiden Azzurri appearances.

 

He jogs around the empty Garilli, on the last cold evening in April. The season has ended; the fans have come and gone to celebrate sixth place. They've stopped him in the street to shake his hand and they've sent him flowers and food and even, in two cases, lingerie. They've stopped him and Pippo, walking down the street on their way to dinner one evening, and taken round after round of photographs. The municipal authorities have already even taken down the giant I LUPI BIANCOROSSI: IN EUROPA PER SEMPRE banner that someone hung from the helmet of Alexander Farnese in the Cavilli on Monday morning.

He jogs three laps around the athletic track, counter-clockwise, and walks another five, before sinking down behind the goal. He crosses his hands behind his head and lies back. Disneyland lingers in the air; one more thing he has wanted all his life.

"I can't believe this is happening," he says out loud.

He isn't even among the top five contenders for the Golden Boot – the Germans have taken the first three places, ridiculously enough – but he's here, on the last day of the season, lying on the grass of the pitch where he's scored over half of his twenty-four goals. _Capocannoniere._ The word rolls off his tongue, or would, if he could bring himself to say it.

Someone is making his way over to him, he notices, eventually. Small and unruffled as always. The dying sun behind him makes his expression unreadable, even as he hovers over Alberto's head.

"There's dew all over," he says. "You'll catch your death."

"Do you know who came to see me this morning?" Alberto asks.

Pippo sits down, a little stiffly, next to him. His shoulders are sharp, dark corners against the failing light.

"It's a small town," he says. "Everybody knows who came to see you."

>   
> ["So what do you say?"
> 
> "No."
> 
> "You at Inter. Me at Milan. We go in there, take all their money, trash the place up, and leave."
> 
> "No."
> 
> "Seriously, though," Mario says. "Why not?"
> 
> "I'm happy here."
> 
> "Oh, come on."
> 
> "I don't want to leave."
> 
> "What is wrong with you?"
> 
> "Nothing!" Alberto yells, in a rare fit of despair for their conversation. "Nothing _is_ wrong with me. Everything is going great. That's why I'm not interested in changing anything."
> 
> "Alberto."
> 
> "I'm getting a new deal," Alberto says, a little sourly. "I'll be sensible."
> 
> "You'll be sentimental," Mario says. "You'll forget."
> 
> "No."
> 
> "They don't get to treat us like chattel and then count on our loyalty. Okay? We're meat to them. To _all_ of them."
> 
> "I know that," Alberto says. "But I'm getting a chance to make a decision for myself, okay, Mario. It doesn't happen often. I'd like to do it for once. Even if I won't have the chance next year."
> 
> "You," Mario growls down the line, "are full of shit."
> 
> "It's because I spend far too much time on the phone with you," Alberto says, and laughs. "Talk soon."]

"You don't have to stay here," Pippo says. His manner is casual again, off-hand. Alberto, who has absent-mindedly reached out to put a hand on his knee, draws it back quickly.

"I think I do," he begins to say, halting, "actually."

"Suit yourself," Pippo says. "I mean, I have a house in Milan as well."

Alberto relaxes, allows the smile that's stretching his heart to bursting point to appear a little on his face. Disneyland recedes into its clouds, taking its conditions and its own demands on reality with it.

"I don't," Alberto says. "But I'm thinking of getting one here."

"Alright, then," Pippo says, after a moment. The smile takes a heartbeat longer to appear. "Alright."

~*~

**Epilogue.**

**Piacenza. 2018.**

JUNE 2018, PIACENZA - Filippo Inzaghi, 44, may be the same slight figure who kept millions on the edge of their seat while watching him play off the shoulder of the last defender, but he is just as impossible to ignore now as he was then. Nine years after the iconic Juventus and Milan striker retired from professional football, he has re-entered the field – this time as director of the youth football program at his hometown club, Piacenza Calcio. Last year's Serie A surprise, the club that has bounced between Serie A and B for most of its existence not only finally consolidated its place in the top flight, three years after promotion, but did so by playing a confident, fluid game under rookie manager Gianpaolo Bellini, and qualifying for the UEFA Cup.

The decision to appoint Inzaghi to a top post within the club may have come as a surprise to many, considering his disappearance from football and public life after retirement, but the sometime-record holder for the highest number of goals scored in UEFA competitions has not been idle. He holds UEFA's coaching qualification degree, and has spent years travelling around the world watching football out of the glare of the spotlights. His longstanding friendship with Piacenza chairman Fabrizio Garilli has finally resulted in his return to the beautiful game.

_**Tifoso!**_ caught up with the man once known as SuperPippo at his new place of work, to talk about football, life, Piacenza's season in the sun, and his plans for the club's increasingly famous youth system. Extracts from the interview:

[...] _**One of Piacenza's revelations this season was new signing and your former Milan teammate, the **_bomber_ Alberto Paloschi. Do you think your style of player, the fox-in-the-box centre-forward, is making a comeback, judging by his success and that of others around Serie A?_  
That's a good question. I don't think the style was ever consciously done away with; people say that, with the improvements to athleticism and defensive practices in football, the fox-in-the-box, as you say, found less and less space in which to do his job. I don't believe there's a pattern to these things: the opportunist will always find a way to create. Perhaps a generation that grew up watching strikers like van Nistelrooy [Ruud; Netherlands, Real Madrid] or even myself, is now coming to prominence. As for Alberto, he's unique. We're happy that he's finally found a place to really showcase his talents.

_**At the end of last season he gave an interview in which he cited you as his inspiration.**_  
Yes.

_**Could you tell us a little more about that?**_  
He's probably the best person to ask these questions to. I think he is inspirational himself; five years ago he was struggling with an ankle injury at Catania, wondering if he would ever play again, and now he's _capocannoniere_.

**_Will he be staying with Piacenza? There were rumours that Inter were considering a signing._**  
He will be staying, I've confirmed this.

**_When you retired, Milan offered you a position on their staff. Why this, now, instead of then?_**  
It's always nice to be where you are needed.

[...]

_**Before we go, a few important questions: in a fight between a lion and a tiger, who would win?**_  
[laughs] Thank you for your time.

_**What's your favourite colour?**_  
I don't think these arbitrary questions are really necessary.

_**What was the last record you bought?**_  
[still smiling] Thank you, that will be all.

_earlier:._

APRIL, 2018 – Serie A top scorer Alberto Paloschi has come out to publicly thank his inspiration for his success at Piacenza Calcio, former teammate and Piacenza native Filippo Inzaghi for his wonder season.

"My teammates and the manager get the credit, of course," said the Biancorossi's bomber. "I'd also like to thank Pippo Inzaghi, my former teammate and mentor at Milan.

"We met soon after I came to this city, and as always, he has been an inspiration for me, and a motive to do well."

The striker refuted claims that he was on the verge of signing for Inter, and confirmed that he would be extending his contract with Piacenza.

"I would like to stay here," he smiled. "For as long as they'll have me."


End file.
